#11 – The Everything Ever Guide to FSearch Because We Said So

This post has absolutely no fucking direct relation to corporate-hoodie book or search engine inboundimization, but about Shamanism, an apropos topic as any.

Shamans command respect via ability to serve as mediums, gateways to special knowledge/physical abilities, which others have not been ordained by higher powers to achieve, kinda like CrissAngel.

Some people self educate, take recreational drugs, and do the actual fucking work to replicate the acumen of shaman. But silly, silly mortal, ask any shaman; you can’t do what they can.

Margery Wolf studied shamanism in Taiwan, finding particular peoples believed shamans possessed by gods, secular vehicles for the will of the gods. In other places, say in North America, your average, possibly overweight (Thanks Coke!) American will think the former peoples to be bat-shit crazy.

On the other side of the bedlam pillow, particular peoples who champion shamans, may believe Americans’ forms of entertainment to be quite embarrassing on a deep, human level.

In contemporary North American or Western European culture, such experiences are discouraged, except among some marginalised sub-groups, or perhaps as part of medical hypnosis. Under these circumstances, many, perhaps most individuals go through life without experiencing altered states of consciousness. A high proportion of those who do experience them will be labelled “crazy”, “stoned” or “drunk”. Their experiences will be dismissed as “hallucinations”, “dissociation” or “fantasy,” unless they happen to belong to a religious group that values “visions” or “conversion” experiences, in which case, as in Wolf’s example, they may have to subject their claims of other-worldly experience to the scrutiny of their peers.

So, if you got em, smoke em. But shaman who be smokin the swindler pipe beware; someone among the strawberry fields may call Mary Jane out, asking for ‘just the facts, ma’am’ or worse, real-time data.

However, that’s unlikely regarding the docile, those accepting the unnatural order and the elite with special abilities/thoughts. The sheep maintain the status quo, enabling such shaman to elect themselves or tell us they have the special privilege of telling us a higher power has privileged them.

Abracadabra, bitches – wake up and get the lead out.

Do you know how Led Zeppelin came about with the band name? I read a biography on the group during a week’s worth of Algebra classes. Someone expressed their style of music ‘would go over like a lead zeppelin.’ Me and generations of fans and practitioner’s emulating them are glad Zep didn’t listen. Similarly, I had a professor who once remarked, “You’ll never be a writer.” Oh?

“You’ll never make it — four groups are out.”
— Anonymous record company executive to the Beatles, 1962

“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible,
commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development
of which we need waste little time dreaming.”
— Lee De Forest, 1926

“Radio has no future.”
— Lord Kelvin

“Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if
not utterly impossible.”
— Simon Newcomb, Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902

Keep dreaming. Keep doing/testing…for yourself, but not because I said so, savvy?

I’m late to the party on this one, but I liked this post for several reasons.

1) We could all stand to have a little bit more Alleyway Shaman/Street Pharaoh in our lifestyles

2) Basically everyone in the world told me “your English degree will be worthless,” so I double-majored in English and another discipline. Guess which degree got me a job? ENGLISH. The blood visions I’ve had since childhood guided me to the path of the pen and I couldn’t be happier.